Policy and Advocacy Aged Care Update October 2024

Aged Care Bill

After its introduction to the Parliament on 12 September, The Aged Care Bill was referred to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee for inquiry with its report due by the end of October. OTA has made a submission to the Committee, reiterating some of our concerns identified in our submission on the Draft Exposure Act, including:

Inclusion of reablement as a key aspect of aged care
Ensuring the Statement of Rights are enforceable
Ensuring High-Quality Care is more than an aspirational benchmark
Ensuring needs-based assessments are undertaken by qualified clinicians
Defining clinical care to ensure the full scope of allied health is provided in accordance with assessed need.

While we acknowledge that some of these issues will be addressed through subordinate legislation or the rules, we are concerned that excluding them from the primary legislation may weaken the Act, compromise the ability to achieve the best outcomes for older Australians needing aged care services, and miss the opportunity to fully implement the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety.

Consultation on Aged Care Act Rules

The Department of Health and Aged Care has commenced its consultation with the sector on some of Rules that will be made under the new Act. DoHAC is planning to publicly release the Rules in stages and has made its first release in this process with the service list. This outlines the care and services that will be available to older people under the new laws.

You can submit your feedback here. Submissions close 31 October 2024.

IHACPA consultation on Support at Home Pricing

IHACPA is tasked with providing annual pricing advice to the Minister for unit-based services on the Support at Home service list.

The new Support at Home program will provide government subsidies for a range of short term and ongoing home care services and supports. The Department of Health and Aged Care intends to set price caps for services available under the Support at Home program.

The IHACPA pricing advice will include:

Recommended prices for services on the Support at Home service list
Prices differentiated by time of delivery (standard business hours and non-standard business hours) and day of delivery (weekdays, Saturday, Sunday, and public holidays)
Recommended pricing adjustments (if any) for services delivered in rural and remote areas
Recommended pricing adjustments (if any) for services delivered to people with diverse backgrounds and life experiences, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and other groups.

Prices for services on the Support at Home service list will include all in-scope costs associated with delivering the service such as labour, transport, consumables and administration.

The public consultation period closes at 5pm AEDT on Friday 25 October 2024.

Information on IHACPA’s approach to pricing Support at Home services and consultation questions are available here.